Artist-produced zines and small press

In the first issue of ArtXX, we included a few pages of DIY/craft-action, which was fun, well & good, and a great opportunity to support other folks making amazing things. As we draw close to putting the finishing touches on the second issue, we were thinking of dropping the DIY section, as we were unsure of whether it meshed well with the rest of the publication.

Then, recently, I stopped by Needles & Pens ( www.needles-pens.com ) for my monthly rifling-through-their-racks and was gleefullly greeted with a few excellent zines and small-run, artist-produced books (favorites, specifically: "This is Home" by Monica Canilao, who was interviewed for our first issue, and "Longview" by Maria Forde, who currently has a show up in the gallery space at Needles & Pens).

How I didn't think to feature artist's zines and books in a zine by, for, and about women in the arts is beyond me. Oh, but we'll remedy the situation. I pitched the idea of having a spread of zines and small press to my co-publishers and was handed a resounding yes. That said, I'm now on the hunt and would love recommendations.

As an important aside, this is part of our mission: "Art XX is an intervention, a fresh reaction to the often elitist world of art magazines that continues to ignore female, queer, trans, outsider and non-white artists. Our goal is to improve the visibility of these folks not only in magazine publications that quite often omit them in favor of more mainstream artists, but to serve as a space of free artistic expression and a vehicle for social change."